The Flash season 7, episode 2 review: The Speed of Thought

“Why does it feel always feel like for us to win, some of us has to lose.” Spoilers for The Flash season 7, episode 2 follow.

Barry now has his speed back on The Flash season 7, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not still hurting from Nash’s sacrifice. Now, the rest of Team Flash must cope with Nash’s loss as well in the latest episode of the Arrowverse series.

As they’re mourning though, they keep getting closer to finding a way to free Iris, Kamilla, and Singh from the mirrorverse.

New powers in The Flash season 7

It’s taken a long time, but Team Flash now has a way into the Mirrorverse. Not only does Barry have his speed back due to the creation of the artificial Speed Force, but he also has new powers: He can think just as quickly as he can run.

This is very a much a power he has in the comics, but the show seems to be doing something different here with it. It’s almost like Barry now has precognition of a sort. It’s an interesting wrinkle to bring into the show at this point, but there lies the rub. What are the drawbacks to the power (because there needs to be at least one in order to basically not make Barry invincible?

The drawbacks come in when Barry starts acting like an emotionless egotist who thinks he knows everything that needs to happen and even starts acting like a robot. It’s pretty creepy to be honest. He lets Frost get shot and then helps her because it was “the best-case scenario.” He even goes so far as to expose Eva’s death on live television. He seems sadistic and it also feels like he is basically becoming a new version of Thawne.

Barry’s new intellect though causes a bit of a rift between him and Cisco. Not an intentional one though at first (that comes later), thankfully because that’s been played to death on the show, but a subconscious one for Cisco. He feels lesser because he couldn’t figure out anyway the solutions to save Iris and Kamilla himself. Cisco has had an inferiority complex on the show before, but the play that it gets here is probably the most organic way it’s been done so far.

At the end of the day though, Barry truly does become Thawne. His own personal desires take over when given something akin to the trolley problem.

Into the Mirrorverse

As for actually getting into the Mirrorverse, the reasoning as to how they can locate is just ridiculous in every way. Allegra randomly gets a message from Iris, who is still stuck in the Mirrorverse, and the explanation from her is basically “I don’t know how it happened but it did.” This feels like an uninspired explanation and risks coming off as really silly, convenient writing but hey, you just have to go with it at a certain point.

As for how they’re going to get into the Mirrorverse, well Barry’s speed thinking is in charge of that. And well, that’s a bad thing because he thinks that the only choice is to save Iris or save Kamilla and Singh. And because he no longer has any emotions due to the artificial Speed Force, things don’t go well when refuses to tell the rest of Team Flash and they find out. Just when you think that they have everything figured out, a new wrench is thrown into the problem, says the rules of the writing room for The Flash. As interesting as this episode is, the cyclical nature being presented is becoming tiring.

But hey, at least this gives away to a pretty cool fight scene between Barry and Frost, who uses Velocity X to give herself superspeed for a time. It’s a fun little fight that ends with Barry basically becoming a full-scale villain.

Time of mourning

One thing that absolutely should have been focused on in greater detail in this episode is the mourning of Nash and the rest of the Council of Wells. The narrative is given about two and a half scenes in this episode, but other than that, it’s basically ignored.

There’s a solid scene between Allegra and Cecile which allows the former to move on from Wells’ death. It’s really, really quick but it’s a nice scene. There’s also a nice speech from Cisco but that’s about it, resulting in a pretty disappointing aftermath for last week’s game-changing story move.

There are several interesting ideas in this week’s episode of The Flash, but other parts fall very flat in comparison.

What did you think of The Flash season 7, episode 2? Let us know in the comments below!